Erez Druk grew up in Israel, but has been in the Bay Area for many years. He has a common theme in his life of obsessing over his current thing. In the 4th grade it was the saxophone, and later on it was being Israel's board game champion, and then - he became obsessed with startups. Outside of tech, he is married and expecting his first child. He's into exercising, reading and coffee. His favorite is going to a coffee shop with his wife, and having a cappuccino and a pastry - but at home, he leans towards his aeropress.

Eight years ago, Erez met his wife who was heading into medical school. He got to see first hand how folks in the healthcare system work, and how hard their jobs are. After wrapping up his prior startup, he started down the path of building a solution that improved the lives of these clinicians.

This is the creation story of Freed.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.getfreed.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/drukerez/

Today, we are another episode in our series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience.

In today's episode, we are talking again with Sergiy Korolov, Co-CEO of Railsware and Co-founder of Mailtrap. In my conversation with Sergiy, we dive into how Railsware delivers value - not just features - by following their BRIDGeS framework, enabling their team to focus on value delivery.

Questions:

• Railsware is proud of its product development approaches, so let’s pave the way to our topic through one of your prominent cases. In its early days, Calendly reached out to you to deliver their product – with a tight budget and a large set of requirements. You’ve said earlier that several of those initial expected features remained unfulfilled. This leads me to the question: to you, what's the difference between shipping features and delivering value, and why do so many product teams get this wrong?
• You’ve been working on several client products, as well as on Railsware’s own. How do you identify what "value" actually means for different stakeholders?
• Railsware is known for its BRIDGeS framework, a useful tool to bring the team on the same page and set the product process straight. Can you walk us through the BRIDGeS framework and how it helps teams focus on value delivery?
• What role does user research and validation play in the BRIDGeS approach?
• Can you share a specific example where applying BRIDGeS helped a team pivot from building the wrong features to delivering real value?
• What's the biggest challenge teams face when transitioning from feature delivery to value delivery?

Links

• https://railsware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiykorolov/
• https://railsware.com/bridges-framework/
• https://mailtrap.io/

Mrinal Wadhwa grew up in India with a Dad in the Armed Forces, so he moved around a lot. His mother was a teacher for 40+ years, and greatly influenced his love for teaching. In addition to this, he grew up loving to build things. He was introduced to computers and the internet by his cousin - and at that point he was hooked. Outside of tech, he is married and enjoys attending concerts in the Bay Area. He plays pool, very seriously. In fact, he is the guy carrying the little bag into a party with his own pool stick.

Mrinal is one of the minds behind Okham, a popular open source Rust toolkit to build secure communications between applications. Late last year, he observed people desiring to build the layer between agent communications... and decided to build something to do it the right way.

This is the creation story of Autonomy.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://autonomy.computer/
• https://docs.ockam.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrinalwadhwa/

Shamba Chowdhury got his first computer at an early age. He was the kid that explored every button and every setting, trying to figure out how it all worked. His curiosity exploded when he was 15 and the internet came around. Post that, his first foray into programming came from his love of playing video games. Outside of tech, he loves to read, in particular crime thrillers. He noted that his favorite is A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci.

Shamba and his co-founder have participated in many hackathons, and they noticed how difficult it was to stitch together ideas, utilizing AI technology. It was at that point they decided to build a no code builder to wire up AI agents together.

This is the creation story of DeForge.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://deforge.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/shambac/

Today, we are kicking off a new series, sponsored by our good friends at Railsware. Railsware is a leading product studio with two main focuses - services and products. They have created amazing products like Mailtrap, Coupler and TitanApps, while also partnering with teams like Calendly and Bright Bytes. They deliver amazing products, and have happy customers to prove it.

In this series, we are digging into the company's methods around product engineering and development. In particular, we will cover relevant topics to not only highlight their expertise, but to educate you on industry trends alongside their experience.

In today's episode, we are talking with Sergiy Korolov, Co-CEO of Railsware and Co-founder of Mailtrap. In this conversation, we are bringing up a popular - but somewhat controversial topic - vibe-coding vs. traditional software development approaches.

Questions:

• You’ve been in tech for over two decades, and have definitely seen many trends come and go. How would you define "vibe-coding" and how does it differ from traditional software development approaches?
• What drove the emergence of vibe-coding? Could it be a response to overly rigid development processes that many companies have? Or it’s a fundamental shift in engineering?
• What do engineers on your team think about vibe-coding? Have you practiced this approach on some of your products?
• What types of products or development contexts are best suited for vibe-coding?
• Is it possible to create successful and scalable products through vibe-coding? For instance, can people balance vibe-coding with business requirements, deadlines, and stakeholder expectations?
• To wrap up, is vibe-coding actually sustainable long-term, or is it just a trendy reaction to over-engineering?

Links

• https://railsware.com/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergiykorolov/
• https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ylazor_vibe-coding-is-real-whether-we-like-it-or-activity-7371646785066422273-cmSO/
• https://mailtrap.io/

Zohar Bronfman spends most of his time in Tel Aviv, Israel these days. He has a focused academic background, specifically in philosophy and neuroscience. He was always intrigued by the question - how do we know what we know? - which led him to get a PhD in Philosophy. While doing that, he also became fascinated with he human mind and empirical decision making, which took him down the road of obtaining another PhD in AI & Neuroscience, essentially emulating brain processes. Outside of tech, he has 3 kids and a startup. He loves a good book in the philosophy or neuroscience space, and is a big fan of sports. Specifically, he loves the NBA and claims to be a Knicks fan.

Zohar and his now co-founder were digging into predictive models, as an extension of their academic studies. They were curious as to why companies, though they were running predictive models, were not making accurate predictions. They soon realized that this was because the AI modeling expertise was centralized at couple of well known companies.

This is the creation story of Pecan AI.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.pecan.ai/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/zohar-bronfman/
• https://demandforecast.ai/

Tanmai Gopal is a repeat guest on the podcast. Back in Season 7, he came on to tell the creation story of Hasura, which is a universal data access layer for next generations apps. He talked through he and his colleagues frustration with building API after API, and taking steps to ensure people wanted to not do that work anymore.

As Hasura started to take off, Tanmai started to ask the question around what was the right method for developers, in particular their applications, to access data. With the advent of AI, he and his team dug into what the right problems were to solve - and they identified the main problem with this type of tech was accuracy and trust.

This is the creation story of PromptQL.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://promptql.io/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanmaig/
• https://codestory.co/podcast/e20-tanmai-gopal-hasura-graph-ql/

Sam Partee started out his love for tech/engineering by working on cars. After many y ears of working on cars, and even starting his own car stereo installation business, he decided that cards were finite and moved onto computers. He fell in love with the space, and the rest is history, filled with super computers, AI, distributed training, Redis and the lot. Outside of tech, he loves to take long hikes with his snowy husky.

Sam and his team built a prior solution, an agent to solve bugs for you. They ran into a litany of problems, but eventually figured out that there was a dire need for an authorization for the activities that agents wanted to do on your behalf. Fast forward, and they are working with Anthropic to define these auth protocols.

This is the creation story of Arcade.

Sponsors

• Vention
• CodeCrafters helps you become a better engineer by building real-world, production-grade projects. Learn hands-on by creating your own Git, Redis, HTTP server, SQLite, or DNS server from scratch. Sign up for free today using this link and enjoy 40% off.
• Full Scale
• Paddle.com
• Sema Software
• PropelAuth
• Postman
• Meilisearch

Links

• https://www.arcade.dev/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/sampartee/